Bragg: Her beauty not just skin deep

By Roy Bragg :
June 14, 2012
: Updated: June 19, 2012 11:09pm

If you've got it, you know it. But you can't acknowledge it. If you do, you're considered to be shallow.

If you don't have it, you know it. You desperately want it, but you can't let anyone know. If you do, you're shallow. And you're desperate, too.

You can't even talk about beauty from afar, either, because then people think you're shallow. Or that you're desperate. Or, in the case of middle-age male newspaper columnists, that you're creepy.

This was the dilemma facing me as I met with Lacy Jill Gresham, a contender for Maxim's Hometown Hotties contest. She's one of a pool of 1,000 women — including several dozen from Texas — vying for this year's title.

For me, this job is about chronicling the lives of normal people and the things they do. And I'm hopeful that, by waffling so much in the first four paragraphs, you're still with me after the fifth paragraph and will give me a chance to tell you about her.

First, let's be blunt. Gresham and other Maxim competitors aren't vying for a Rhodes Scholarship or a MacArthur Foundation grant. It's a national popularity contest held on the Internet. And popularity isn't determined from playing the xylophone or twirling a flaming baton.

If you're unfamiliar with Maxim magazine, check under the bed of the closest American teenage boy or under that suspicious stack of clothes in his bedroom closet. The magazine is not pornographic, nor does it contain nudity. But for many young men, the arrival of the latest edition of Maxim is the highlight of an otherwise pointless month.

Next, there is no other way to put this, so I'll just type it — Gresham is stunningly beautiful.

I don't want to go overboard here but, to paraphrase Richard Pryor, Gresham is the kind of woman who makes men walk into walls.

I showed up expecting a diva or a bonehead or both. I got neither. Gresham is pleasant, thoughtful and straightforward.

Married 10 years and the mother of two young boys, she's an intensive care nurse in a San Antonio-area hospital. It's a job she considers her life's calling.

“I am serving the underserved,” she says, “and I love my job.”

Gresham told me she grew up on a farm outside of Devine and did all of the things that Devine kids do — band, sports, cheerleading and youth livestock. She raised show animals and was part of the school's award-winning livestock judging team.

“It was a great place to live and it was a great childhood,” she says.

Friends and family have encouraged her for years, she says, to model.

“I thought people were just saying that to be nice,” she says.

Until the Maxim contest, the only pageant she entered was Miss Medina County Fair. And she won it by writing a better essay than the other girls.

“I got to be in a lot of parades,” she says.

At the suggestion of her husband (also a nurse) and friends, she entered Maxim's contest. San Antonio glamour photographer Sal Robles took her photos. Other friends have helped her navigate social media, where she seeks votes on Facebook and Twitter.

If her photos were movies, they'd be PG-13. Grisham says she won't do nudity, nor will she do overly suggestive poses.

“Out of respect for my family, my kids, myself and my career, my clothes will stay on,” she says. “There's a line I won't even get close to, and that's the way it's always going to be.”

As evidence, she wouldn't answer some of the contest's profile questions, which she felt were vulgar or inappropriate.

The contest ends in a few weeks. The winner gets $25,000 and a photo spread in the magazine.